How is this game? Have some time off and wanted to pick it up and play it. Is it fairly easy to catch on to?

I liked it until I was spoiled by all the new stuff added in Empire: Total War. The base medieval game is just meant to be fun with a bit of realism added and it succeeds at that. Total War has been known for being easy to mod so I know there are full conversions out there to get more realism or change the way city management is done. I also found it very easy to get into modding and just start changing things I didn't like about the game. (fu inquisitors)

Still, Empire or later is a whole lot less micromanagement and is hard to go back to earlier in the series.

I liked it. Would have preferred a Medieval 3 over Rome 2. Try Shogun2.

One of my favourite games. Best TW setting imo.

To pile on, don't pass up M2TW & Kingdoms expansion. On the modding side, there are some amazing mods that add just about every flavor you could ever want. Rome TW is better for the classical eras, but M2TW was amazing for the Lord of the Rings conversions. Go download Third Age: TW conversion and see the absolute limits the engine is capable of. Custom cities in siege battles, Balrogs, Trolls, all kinds of coolness. Heavy on the lore too, you can even lead Arnor as Aragorn and reunite the two kingdoms. Very worth it!

If you just want medieval period, Stainless Steel and Deus Lo Vult are great on units, AI, map etc.

I was thinkinig of getting Rome 2 but with all the negative reviews I re-installed medieval 2 and been having great fun with it. I wish there was a ww2 version of this game.

Sadly, Napoleon, even with heavy, heavy modding, was still crippled by terrible AI, both on battlefield and campaign. So much potential there. On battlefield, AI wouldn't form a firing line and often would just run into your lines and force a melee. On campaign, it would never really build forts, or agressively do any city build up. At least in my experience.

+1

RTW2 is worth it if you're a big fan of the series and time period, but it's the easily the worst entry in the series, IMO.  I still have ~320 hours played on it, though.  


If you get Medieval 2 + Kingdoms expansion, consider the "Custom Campaign Mod 2" mod.  It's an "unofficial" mod made by one of the game's developers that fixes many issues and tweaks balancing.  http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/medievaliitotalwarkingdoms/mod/23375.html

FYI - in Medieval 2, there is a bug that prevents units with 2-handed weapons from fighting properly (Dismounted English Knights, Billmen, Venetian Heavy Infantry, to name a few).  Their attack animation is slow because they fight with a big 2-hand weapon, but when hit by an opponent in a melee, the animation resets and starts over, severely limiting their effectiveness.

I wish they would focus on smaller, more detailed geographical areas.  I think a Greece Total War would be fun to play.  Lots of city states to play against, and if done just over that one country, there's more than enough varying terrain to exploit, both on the battle and campaign map.

Yup

Translation: They want to charge you $5 for "culture packs", which still won't be as good as much of the modded content from the previous games.

The series has gone dildos. They still haven't delivered Hannibal or Alexander level AI on the battlefield, they still haven't replicated the realistic numbers of men on the battlefield, they are still fixing things that should have been fixed before release.

Instead, they'll give you facial expressions, HDR, realistic shadows, physics, volumetric smoke and fog, dynamic water, all to make you ignore the fact that the enemy charged its general straight into your spearmen, or their musket troops just decided to advance into yours and engage in melee, and in the campaign the AI is spamming stacks of 2 units all over the place. And that's if you can even keep it from crashing!

I would have been fine staying at MTW2: Kingdoms levels of graphics and animations, as long as I could get:

1) Increased stack sizes
2) Ability to manage other allied armies/reinforcements, ala Kingdoms
  2B) Pre-battle planning of some sort, assign strategy to AI supporting commanders, ie harass, attempt to envelop, set formations as XXX, etc.
3) Optimize engine to support realistic battle numbers, using multi-threading, sprites for distant armies/units, etc.
4) CO-OP! Only thing I wanted honestly from R2TW, and even it was broken.
5) Extensive, Bethesda levels of support for Modding, release actual expansions that add features to the game!

Napoleon, fine? Even with heavy modding, Napoleon still fell flat IMO. Still had mediocre army makeup, never upgraded forts etc, and "difficulty" doesn't affect how the AI plays, just adjusts your stats and morale so your units are weaker. Still had crashes in naval battles when I tried to board a ship sometimes, and capturing ships was still completely broken, ie enemy ships strike their colors, aren't sinking, yet at the end of battle none are taken as prizes. "Hard" difficulty doesn't turn them into Ghenghis Khan incarnate or anything. I never had Napoleon's columns trying to smash my lines.

I want to see AI's like Supreme Commander, Cheating AI's that are so riduculous that even if you cheat with a trainier, they are hard to beat. I'd rather they create a monster of an AI and try to hold it back, than a wimpy one and tie my hands back.

And as far as Rome 2, on paper it has all the features I ever dreamed of in Rome 1. In practice, I hated their campaign map implementation. I hated how transport ships would always beat my actual warships EVERY TIME. I hated that they wanted me to PAY for blood/gore. I hate that they want me to PAY for "culture packs", which were available in Rome 1 after beating the campaign once! The DLC/anti-modding movement is a cancer on gaming, allowing devs to release sub-par beta games and then expect us to pay MORE money while they "finish" the game, release a few mediocre DLC bits, promise all kinds of DLC expansions and new stories, only to bail out and start talking about the next title.

I will applaud CA in this case for actually releasing mini-campaigns ala Caesar and Hannibal, but I'm not at a point where I am willing to give them any more money. Their $$$ milking with charging for blood and other things that should have shipped with the game has soured my opinion of them significantly.

Transport ships have weak hulls.  Just ram rather than board and watch them die.  Also, catapults and ballista rape them.  

Cheating AIs are terrible and ruin a lot of fun.  Yes, I wish the AI in Rome 2 (and any other Total War game) was better, but if you're not playing a min/max strategy, it still puts up a challenge.

I'm with you on paying for the blood/gore pack, but the culture packs would not have been released if not for DLC - quite a few factions in Rome 1 were unplayable (without mods).  The playable factions from culture packs in Rome 2 are also much more fleshed out than minor factions in other Total War titles.

Accusing The Creative Assembly of being "anti-modding" is disingenuous.  I enjoyed modding Rome 1, myself, but the games continue to grow in size and complexity, making modding more difficult.  That said, there are plenty of mods and people working on mods out there.

The Total War titles have been sold "unfinished" since Rome 1, that criticism is nothing new.

Make sure you have the Kingdoms expansion, then get the Lord of the Rings the Third Age Mod for it and the win at killing Sauron forever!!!!!